Israel’s Hard-Line Position Is Sabotaging US-Iran Negotiations

After a five-month hiatus, indirect negotiations between the United States and Iran resumed last week in Vienna in an attempt to revise the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). The outlook isn’t good.

Less than a week into negotiations, Britain, France, and Germany accused Iran of “walking back almost all of the difficult compromises” achieved during the first round of negotiations before Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, was sworn into office. While such actions by Iran certainly aren’t helping the negotiations succeed, there is another country — one that is not even a party to the agreement that was ripped up in 2018 by then president Donald Trump — whose hard-line position is creating obstacles to successful negotiations: Israel.

On Sunday, amid reports that the talks might collapse, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett called on the countries meeting in Vienna to “take a strong line” against Iran. According to Channel 12 news in Israel, Israeli officials are urging the United States to take military action against Iran, either by striking Iran directly or by hitting an Iranian base in Yemen. Regardless of the negotiations’ outcome, Israel says that it reserves the right to take military action against Iran.

Israeli threats aren’t just bluster. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated, presumably by Israel. In July 2020, a fire, attributed to an Israeli bomb, caused significant damage to Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. In November 2020, shortly after Joe Biden won the presidential election, Israeli operatives used remote control machine guns to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Had Iran retaliated proportionately, the United States might have backed up Israel, with the conflict spiraling into a full-blown US–Middle East war.

In April 2021, as diplomatic efforts were underway between the Biden administration and Iran, sabotage attributed to Israel caused a blackout at Natanz. Iran described the action as “nuclear terrorism.”

Ironically described as Iran’s Build Back Better plan, after each of Israel’s nuclear facility sabotage actions, Iranians have quickly gotten their facilities back online and even installed newer machines to more rapidly enrich uranium. As a result, American officials recently warned their Israeli counterparts that the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are counterproductive. But Israel replied that it has no intention of letting up.

As the clock runs out to reseal the JCPOA, Israel is sending its top-level officials out to make its case. Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid was in London and Paris last week asking them not to support US intentions to return to the deal. This week, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Israeli Mossad chief David Barnea are in Washington for meetings with US defense secretary Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and CIA officials. According to the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Barnea brought “updated intelligence on Tehran’s efforts” to become a nuclear country.

Along with verbal appeals, Israel is preparing militarily. They have allocated $1.5 billion for a potential strike against Iran. Throughout October and November, they held large-scale military exercises in preparation for strikes against Iran and this spring they plan to hold one of their largest strike simulation drills ever, using dozens of aircraft, including Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet.

The United States is also readying for the possibility of violence. A week prior to the negotiations resuming in Vienna, the US’s top commander in the Middle East, General Kenneth McKenzie, announced that his forces were on standby for potential military actions should the negotiations collapse. It was reported Wednesday that Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz’s meeting with Lloyd Austin would include discussing possible joint US-Israeli military drills simulating the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Stakes are high for the talks to succeed. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed this month that Iran is now enriching uranium up to 20 percent purity at its underground facility at Fordo, a site where the JCPOA forbids enrichment. According to the IAEA, since Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA, Iran has furthered its uranium enrichment to 60 percent purity (compared with 3.67 percent under the deal), steadily moving closer to the 90 percent needed for a nuclear weapon. In September, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report stating that, under the “worst-case breakout estimate,” within a month Iran could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

The US exit from the JCPOA has not only led to the nightmarish prospect of another Middle East country becoming a nuclear state (Israel reportedly has between eighty and four hundred nuclear weapons), but it has already inflicted enormous damage on the Iranian people. The “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign — originally Trump’s but now under Joe Biden’s ownership — has plagued Iranians with runaway inflation; skyrocketing food, rent, and medicine prices; and a crippled health care sector.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, US sanctions were preventing Iran from importing necessary medicines to treat such illnesses as leukemia and epilepsy. In January 2021, the United Nations released a report stating that US sanctions on Iran were contributing to an “inadequate and opaque” response to COVID-19. With more than a hundred thirty thousand officially registered deaths so far, Iran has the highest number of recorded coronavirus deaths in the Middle East. Officials say that real numbers are likely even higher.

If the United States and Iran are not able to reach an agreement, the worst-case scenario will be a new US–Middle East war. Reflecting on the abject failures and destruction wrecked by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a war with Iran would be catastrophic. One would think that Israel, which receives $3.8 billion annually from the United States, would feel obligated not to drag the United States and their own people into such a disaster. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Though teetering on the brink of collapse, talks resumed again this week. Iran, now under a hard-line government that US sanctions helped bring into power, has shown that it isn’t going to be an acquiescent negotiator, and Israel is hell-bent on sabotaging the talks. This means it’s going to take bold diplomacy and a willingness to compromise from the Biden administration to get the deal resealed. Let’s hope Biden and his negotiators have the will and courage to do that.